Dive Brief:
- Optimism among marketers is falling due to economic volatility, with only 54% of industry professionals believing 2026 will be better than this year, according to WARC’s annual Marketer’s Toolkit report. That figure marks an 11 percentage-point drop from 2024.
- WARC identified five areas in focus for marketers: a vanishing middle class, gambles on creator marketing, delivering escapism through in-person and digital experiences, a shift away from SEO and changing consumer milestones that are affecting audience segmentation.
- The report, now in its 15th year, underpins an increasingly bifurcated consumer market that will challenge many traditional outreach strategies and puts the onus on marketers to address affordability while establishing stronger emotional bonds.
Dive Insight:
For marketers planning for 2026, the only thing certain is uncertainty as tariffs, geopolitical strife and softer consumer spending continue to roil the business, according to WARC’s latest industry assessment. The research underpins a widening wealth divide that is affecting marketing fundamentals as well as the embrace of emergent but riskier media channels, such as creators and generative engine optimization (GEO) for search.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of marketers agree that the term “middle class” is effectively meaningless as income growth slows, costs rise and job security is threatened. As brands are faced with engaging either a high or low end of the market, WARC recommended they help guide consumers through “affordability tension,” or understanding the gap between what people want and what is realistically within their means.
Conventional consumer milestones, such as having children or reaching retirement age, are in flux against this backdrop. Fifty-nine percent of marketers believe audience segmentation based on factors like age, income and social class are less effective today while 57% think traditional family structures and gender roles are different, including through the presence of more childless households. Given this, marketers must reassess some of their established assumptions around what triggers spending and whether there are new entry points for consumers into their brand categories.
Tapping into “cultural and ideological values” is one way to establish emotional resonance amid this fractured consumer picture, according to WARC. Another route is emphasizing unity and stability in messaging and developing “emotionally immersive experiences.”
WARC argued brands should be a counter force to a term variably known as “crapification,” or the deterioration in the user experience caused by online platforms maximizing monetization and engagement — a trend that has been greatly exacerbated by digital advertising and generative artificial intelligence (AI). Thinking beyond traditional ads, 78% of marketers are investing in digital channels and 74% are betting on in-person activations to create enhanced brand experiences that can provide escapism in 2026.
Others are ramping up spending on the creator economy, with 61% of marketers expected to pour more resources into the category next year. That said, WARC pointed to a tension between creator reach and results, with studies suggesting ad spend can be wasted or ineffective. The firm pushed marketers to ensure they are aligned internally on KPIs for creator campaigns and that they are leveraging levers like paid media and creative best practices to ensure success.
Hovering over many aspects of marketing is the threat and opportunity posed by generative AI. Just 11% of marketers are not worried about AI’s impact on search, a bedrock digital channel, while 24% are pivoting SEO-based strategies to GEO. To cut through the AI noise, WARC encouraged marketers to prioritize tests that carry a measurable outcome on customer journeys and to not let experiments with newfangled technology distract from what’s already proven to work.
Informa, which owns a controlling stake in Informa TechTarget, the publisher behind Marketing Dive, is also invested in WARC. Informa has no influence over Marketing Dive’s coverage.
